Saturday, September 29, 2012

In verse two of
chapter thirteen of Acts we read “While they were serving the Lord and fasting,
the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which
I have called them.’” (13:2) With this being presented as the direct
command of the Holy Spirit, and with knowledge that it is the Gentile mission
to which Paul has been called (as indicated by the directive by which the Lord
Jesus, after speaking to Saul on the road to Damascus, instructs a man named
Ananias in regards to Saul, saying “Go, because this man is My chosen
instrument to carry My name before Gentiles and kings and the people of Israel”
– 9:15) and which will receive the great bulk of his attention, we should not
be surprised to find mention of the Holy Spirit being quite frequent in the
story of Paul’s ministry.

It seems that Luke
wants to make it abundantly clear that the Holy Spirit, which he has Jesus
mentioning at the close of Luke and the opening of Acts, as that which Jesus
has promised and which will be the means by which His followers will be able to
function as His witnesses, is the one that is sending Paul out to the
Gentiles. Accordingly, in verse four of the same chapter we read “So
Barnabas and Saul, sent out by the Holy Spirit” (13:4a), with this quickly
followed by mention of Selucia, Cyprus, Salamis, and Paphos (13:4-6).
Even though “they began to proclaim the word of God in the Jewish synagogues”
(13:5b), the Gospel message would not be long restricted to this
environment.

A few verses
later, we again hear of the Holy Spirit in an encounter with a man first
introduced as “Bar-Jesus,” who is later known as “Elymas,” when we read that
“Saul (also known as Paul), filled with the Holy Spirit, stared straight at
him” (13:9a) and spoke words of rebuke. Shortly, we find Paul in the
synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, speaking to the “Men of Israel and… Gentiles who
fear God” (13:16b). In his speech to these people, Paul tells them the
story of Israel, which implies that this has value for a Gentile audience as
well (as they are being included in the family of Abraham---God’s family of
redemption). The story of Israel begins with the Egyptian exodus,
climaxes in the Resurrection of Jesus, and leads to talk of justification for
all of his audience.

Paul’s talk of
justification, within his Holy Spirit directed mission, has him saying “by this
one everyone who believes is justified from everything from which the law of
Moses could not justify you” (13:39), which, when we take into consideration
that his speech began with talk of Israel in bondage to Egypt (exile), seems to
be an indicator that his audience is in an exile of their own, in need of the
experience of exodus. Their justification (covenant inclusion, salvation)
will be their exodus, as Moses, most importantly, is linked to the event of
exodus, God’s establishment of a covenant people to serve His purposes, and a
symbol of that justification. With Moses, that symbol was the law.
With the new Moses (Jesus), that symbol is trust in the Gospel (Jesus is Lord),
which is a trust like that first demonstrated by Abraham.

It is here that Paul
meets with opposition to his message, presumably because it so freely incorporates
Gentiles, without restriction or any need to undergo long-standing rites of
qualification (no need to adopt the then current covenant markers of
circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, food laws). Thus, the next time Paul has
the opportunity to speak to the assembly, “the Jews… began to contradict what
Paul was saying” (13:45), which eventually prompts the declaration of “turning
to the Gentiles” (13:46b), with all of this occurring under the auspices of the
activity of the Holy Spirit. Paul even adds, quoting Isaiah, that “this
is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have appointed you to be a light for the
Gentiles, to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” (13:47) Paul
grasps on to the words of the prophet to make the point that God’s covenant
plan had always included Gentiles, and that it was His intention for His
covenant people to take His salvation out to the peoples of the world, rather
than forcing those peoples to come to them.

Consequently, “When
the Gentiles heard this, they began to rejoice and praise the word of the Lord,
and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed” (13:48).
Listening to the forty-eighth verse in its immediate context and in its
narrative context, as well as alongside the soteriological context provided by
Paul’s thoughts about justification as expressed in Romans and elsewhere, we
are not allowed to hear this as a selective statement about some that had been
pre-destined to believe, while others were pre-destined not to believe.
Rather, we hear it as a reference to Gentiles, as it had always been God’s plan
for Gentiles to believe, as they too, as divine image-bearers, had been
appointed to participate in the life of the age to come, doing so right alongside
Israel. As this particular portion of the narrative is brought to a
close, Luke reminds us of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which first
occurred at Pentecost and sparked a highly determinative message from Peter and
set the stage for what would come in the story he would be telling in this
book, by writing about the Gentiles who were hearing and rejoicing at the words
of Paul concerning Jesus, that “the disciples were filled with joy and with the
Holy Spirit” (13:52).

Friday, September 28, 2012

Peter relates Cornelius’ words to him, which were that “he
had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon
Simon, who is called Peter, who will speak a message to you by which you and
your entire household will be saved.’” (11:13-14) Peter emphasizes that
it would be the message that would bring salvation---a message that would bring
these Gentiles into covenant and so begin the process of transformation (the
working out of their salvation, if you will), rooted in belief (like Abraham)
in the Gospel that generates an unswerving loyalty to the faithful God revealed
in Jesus, that will conform these believers into the image of God in Christ and
so cause them to more accurately bear the divine image as truly human beings,
reflecting the glory of God into the world and articulating the praises of all
creation back to God. Inherently then, it is belief in this message that
grafts these Gentiles into the tree of God’s covenant people (to borrow some
terminology from Paul, as he reflects on what God has done and is doing in and
for the world via His kingdom people). The belief that Jesus is Lord
generates salvation. The adoption of covenant markers (works of the law)
as that which brings salvation, continues the process of salvation, or
indicates salvation, here goes un-contemplated.

Peter will go on to build on the fact that it is the
message, with its content and the power of that content, that generates
salvation (justification, right-standing, covenant inclusion). Being
reminded of that, we get to hear Peter say “as I began to speak, the Holy
Spirit fell on them just as He did on us at the beginning” (11:15).
Though it is not reiterated, we know from the story of chapter ten that these
Gentiles were said to have spoken in tongues and praised God, with this
following his reminding them of cross and Resurrection of Jesus. The
actions, said to be indicative of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, are the
indication of belief in Jesus as Lord, with all of this occurring independent
of the exercise, application, adherence to, or mention of any of the works of
the law. When Peter tells the story in Jerusalem, he does not make
mention of this occurrence, instead forcing the recollection of what happened
to them at “the beginning,” at Pentecost, when they too enjoyed this
experience.

God indeed shows no partiality (Acts 10:34). The Holy
Spirit is poured out on all who believe the Gospel, adopting people into Abraham’s
family (God’s household) without discrimination. He continues to make his
case and to contemplate what all of this means, adding “I remembered the word
of the Lord, as He used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit’” (11:16), as the stories of Israel’s defining
water-crossings resonate and come to be shared by these newly adopted sons and
daughters through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit and its work to
produce a believing trust in the message of the Gospel (which is the evidence
of the activity of the Spirit). Continuing, Peter says “Therefore if God
gave them the same gift as He also gave us after believing in the Lord Jesus
Christ,” with that gift being the inclusion in God’s kingdom project that was
begun in the Resurrection and is carried on through the announcement and
conscientious enactment of the Gospel, “who was I to hinder God?” (11:17)
The question is informative and enlightening, while also being a damning
verdict on those that wanted to maintain certain boundaries and covenantal delineations.
With these words on the lips of Peter, we are not left to wonder why Paul would
eventually accuse Peter of hypocrisy.

With Peter having voiced his position and his question, a
collective verdict is rendered. We read that “When they heard this, they
ceased their objections and praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted the
repentance that leads to life even to the Gentiles.’” (11:18) With this
statement, as we realize the covenant and story-of-Israel language that it
conveys, this group of early church elders realized that Gentiles, without
restriction and without the need to adhere to the traditional covenant markers
(as evidenced by the fact of their belief in Jesus, their speaking in tongues,
and their praising of God that made them equal to themselves as those that had experienced
Pentecost, which also aligned them with the story of Abraham and belief that
preceded circumcision or any other requirement), now share in the story and
covenant and inheritance of Israel, standing with them in exile and joining
with them in the experience of exodus that was the life of the resurrection of
the body.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

With his own witness
to the pouring out of the Spirit, the speaking in tongues, and the praising of
God, which would be an explicit reminder of Pentecost, Peter says “No one can
withhold the water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy
Spirit just as we did, can he?” (10:47) Peter uses the inclusive language
of “we.”We could here note that Paul
uses such language on a regular basis. We are also reminded of chapter
two’s informing us that “those who accepted his message were baptized, and that
day about three thousand people were added” (2:41).

Along with that, as
we hear the telling of this story and the words of Peter in the context of the
story of Israel, it is impossible to disconnect the concept of baptism from the
crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan River (both on dry
land). These are pivotal events within Israel’s story, and they are told
as tales of God’s faithfulness to His people. Also, the baptism in
chapter two would have been exclusively Jews, in Jerusalem, during a great
Sabbath, whereas that of chapter ten was a baptism of Gentiles. Thus,
because both Jews and Gentiles experience baptism, both stand before God in a
state of equality.

Baptism, when
connected to Jesus as Messiah of Israel, allows those that undergo the
experience to participate in that tale of God’s faithfulness, symbolically
crossing from a state of exile to a state of exodus. Because the baptism
that stems from a belief in Jesus is also rooted in the understanding that the
Resurrection of Jesus brought an end to the old age and ushered in the new age,
baptism becomes the picture of the believer’s deliverance from the exile of the
old age/creation, into the new age/creation. We could comfortably
presume, based on his writing, that such thoughts found a home in the mind of
Paul as well.

This series of events
caused no little consternation amongst the circumcised believers in Jerusalem
(11:2). Those that took issue with what Peter had done, accused him of
going to uncircumcised men and sharing a meal with them (11:3). These are
the same issues at work, against which Paul stridently speaks, in Galatians
two, though the setting was Antioch rather than Jerusalem. This is nothing
short of a clear disavowal of the covenant markers of Judaism, as Peter has, by
confirming the presence of the Holy Spirit in the uncircumcised and by
violating food laws (though Sabbath is not in view), has transgressed and
effectively repudiates the marks that had previously been the means by which
one was identified as a covenant member in good standing. Though they can
certainly be practiced, they are of no particular use or value, when set
against the new covenant marker of belief in Jesus as the crucified and
resurrected Messiah of Israel and Lord of all (the Gospel). Again, all
this is stressed, though it seems to not necessarily have any bearing on
Romans, because Paul will be more than aware of all of these things, and would
most likely heavily rely on Peter’s experience and telling of the experience in
formulating his positions about Gentile inclusion under the covenant and their
participation in the promises of Israel’s God.

Peter takes up the challenge that is presented to him, which
is also a challenge to the legitimacy of the Gospel message and to the
commission given to him and the rest of the disciples by Jesus. As if to
emphasize that this subject is quite crucial to the church of the Christ, Luke
has Peter retelling the whole of the story of his encounter with Cornelius (so
we get to read the story twice, back to back---by contrast, we read the story
of Paul’s “conversion” three times in Acts, all of which are offered
separately). Indeed, “Peter began and explained it to them point by
point” (11:4). He talks about the men that came to him, saying “The
Spirit told me to accompany them without hesitation” (11:12a). He also
points out that six of the brothers that were with him, presumably all Jewish
believers in Jesus, went with him and also entered the house of the Gentile
Cornelius (11:12b).

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Peter adds “you know what happened through Judea,” thus
reiterating Cornelius’ previous knowledge and building from his use of “Lord”
in reference to Jesus, “beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John
announced; with respect to Jesus from Nazareth, that God anointed Him with the
Holy Spirit and with power” (10:37-38a). A bit later, after mention of
the Resurrection, Peter adds “He commanded us to preach to the people and to
warn them that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the
dead” (10:42). Conversely, this is not Caesar’s role. Furthermore,
“About Him all the prophets testify, that everyone who believes in Him receives
forgiveness of sins through His name” (10:43). Forgiveness of sins, for
the prophets, was firstly a gift of God to Israel, and was to be equated with
exodus from exile or rescue from foreign subjugation (as proof of God had
forgiven them for failing to rightly bear His image in and for the
world). In the name of Jesus, or by acting on behalf of His kingdom
because of the confession of Jesus as Lord of all, all are able to receive this
gift that had been promised to the covenant people of God.

To demonstrate the thoughts that were in the air in the
first century, if the talk of the “pouring out of the Holy Spirit” that was to
be found in the story that the church told about itself, part of which found
its way into the Acts of the Apostles (much like Israel’s story was told
through the Hebrew Scriptures), was in Paul’s mind when he was penning the
fifth chapter of his letter to Rome, then we can reasonably suggest that so too
was Peter’s insistence that “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness
through His name” was in mind while Paul composed what would eventually be
designated as chapter ten, as he says much the same thing about believing in
Him.

With Peter having
pulled the Gentiles into the story of Israel (the story that began with
Abraham) via talk of belief and forgiveness of sins, which are distinct
covenant terms, the story receives its climax as Luke reports “While Peter was
still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the
message” (10:44). This metaphorical falling had witnesses. Indeed,
“The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were greatly astonished
that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles”
(10:45). Luke’s construction of this passage inside the narrative is
obvious, as the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, here linked to Peter and his
preaching, also links back to the second chapter of Acts and Peter’s
explanation of the strange events that caused Peter to call to mind the prophet
Joel and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that was to accompany the last
days.

This clues us in to
the fact that Peter and Luke, along with Paul (because he seizes on these
metaphors), believed that the last days (the eschaton) had begun with the
Resurrection of Jesus and was being carried forward into the world via the
activity of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, this is as a reminder that the
original community of Jesus believers, employing a Jewish eschatology that
would have been shared by Jesus Himself, did not view the “last days” as an
end-of-the-world conflagration in which the world would cease to exist.
Rather, they viewed the “last days” as the time when the loving reign of the
Creator God over His creation would be implemented. They believed that
this state of affairs had sprung into factuality in the resurrected Christ and
in His church, with this being the natural accompaniment of Jesus’ repeated
declaration that, in His presence and person, the kingdom of God was at
hand.

Highlighting the
connection to the second chapter of Acts and to the events of Pentecost (there is
a story being told in Acts, after all), not only do we have the pouring out of
the Holy Spirit, but we also have the fact that the circumcised believers heard
the Gentile believers “speaking in tongues and praising God” (10:46).
This had been the experience of those that composed the assembly of believers
in chapters two and four. With this, Gentiles were now experiencing the
power of God via the Spirit. As far as Israel’s story was concerned, this
experience of being empowered by the Spirit of God had been the exclusive
domain of the specially chosen people of God. So when it comes to the
story of the operation of God’s covenant, what is here reported to have taken
place is groundbreaking.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

In the tenth chapter of Acts, Peter pays a visit to the
household of Cornelius. Cornelius is a Gentile, which makes the record of
this encounter of particular interest to the mission of the church as presented in Acts and expounded on in the New Testament. We will not recap the
whole of the interaction or what led to Peter’s dealings with this prominent
Gentile (though there will be some recapping), and we will begin by recounting
that it is near the close of the story that we hear Peter say “I now truly
understand that God does not show favoritism in dealing with people”
(10:34b). This is not about individual favoritism, but favoritism towards
peoples or nations, so it should not, at first, cause us to take the position
of an inward focus or cause us to direct our thoughts at some type of earned
salvation or status with God.

With that established, we continue, hearing “but in every
nation,” which reinforces the point just made, “the person who fears Him and
does what is right is welcomed before Him” (10:35). This welcome is,
quite obviously, a welcome to the covenant people of God. To this point,
briefly reaching into the story of Cornelius, and doing so that we might
appropriately hear the words of Peter within the narrative that is on offer,
rather than visiting the text with possibly foreign notions of what is meant by
“does what is right,” we find very little activity or doing attributed to
Cornelius. We are alerted to the fact that Cornelius is a God-fearing man
that performed acts of charity and regularly prayed (10:2). Right away
then, he is introduced in a far more flattering way than was Abraham in Genesis.

We go on to learn that “About three o’clock one afternoon he
saw clearly in a vision an angel of God who came in and said to him,
‘Cornelius.’ Staring at him and becoming greatly afraid, Cornelius
replied, ‘What is it, Lord?’ The angel said to him, ‘Your prayers and
your acts of charity have gone up as a memorial before God.’” (10:3-4)
This should give us some pause, causing us to reflect on God’s opinion about
“good works” and their ultimate value. Again, and for what it’s worth,
Cornelius is introduced into the narrative of the people of God in a more
positive light than was Abraham, which is something to keep in mind.

Cornelius receives instructions: “Now send men to Joppa and
summon a man named Simon, who is called Peter. This man is staying as a
guest with a man named Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea”
(10:5-6). With this said, we find that “When the angel who had spoken to
him departed, Cornelius called two of his personal servants and a devout
soldier from among those who served him, and when he had explained everything
to them, he sent them to Joppa” (10:7-8). Later, after Peter has come to
his house, Cornelius, relating his story, speaks to Peter and says “I sent for
you at once, and you were kind enough to come. So now we are all here in
the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to say
to us” (10:33).

We’ll notice that Cornelius, in both verse four and verse
thirty-three, uses the word “Lord.” Based on the whole of Luke’s
presentation, and especially the story of Saul’s blinding on the road to
Damascus, where he says “Who are you, Lord?” and heard “I am Jesus whom you are
persecuting” (9:5), we should presume that Cornelius’ references to the “Lord”
are to be considered to be references to the Lord Jesus. Therefore,
Cornelius effectively gives voice to the Gospel, calling Jesus Lord, thus
taking upon himself the mark of the covenant, which is the confession of Jesus
as Lord. It is these things told about Cornelius that, according to the
story on offer, fall into the category of “does what is right” (demonstrating a
respect of God by engaging in charity, praying regularly, and calling Jesus
“Lord”).

This use of “Lord,” with Peter recognizing it for what it
is, allows him to move immediately to his speech, pointing to God’s lack of
favoritism and His desire to welcome people from all nations before Him.
It is telling that Peter does not go into the story of Abraham, nor does he
tell the story of Jesus as if Cornelius is hearing it for the first time.
Instead, he says “You know the message He sent to the people of Israel,
proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)”
(10:36). We shall not fail to here note that Cornelius is a
centurion---an official in Caesar’s army. He, of all people, would be
well aware that “good news” is routinely linked to the Caesar. In
addition, the use of “Christ,” which is “Messiah,” and means “king”, together
with a proclamation that He and not Caesar is “Lord of all,” was quite a bold
statement by Peter, considering his setting, while also being emblematic of the
proclamation of Christ-followers from the beginning.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Peter, still speaking in the second chapter of Acts,
continues the use of the pouring metaphor, saying “This Jesus God raised up,
and we are all witnesses of it. So then, exalted to the right hand of
God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He has
poured out what you both see and hear” (2:32-33). The correct response
then, is to “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of sins” (2:38a). The result? “You will
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38b).

It is not exactly a groundbreaking idea to put forward the
thought that whereas the Gospels as we know them are the story of Jesus’
ministry, that the story of Acts is that of the ministry of the Holy Spirit,
and thus Jesus’ ministry by a different means, that being His church by the
Spirit. We can add a unique twist in what we are here doing by pointing
out the broad New Testament application, such that the pouring out of the Holy
Spirit that Paul mentions in chapter five of Romans is linked to the
conclusions that he is drawing from his understanding of Gentile participation
in the covenant (justification) based on the believing example of Abraham, and
that it is based on the understanding of that ministry of the Holy Spirit that
we see recorded in Acts (though Acts would not yet have been composed and
promulgated, so Paul is relying only on what he has learned) and the regular
use of the “pouring out” metaphor.

Obviously, Joel’s vision of God’s “last day” actions, so
crucial to Acts two, was looked upon quite favorably. The fact that Peter
picks up on this, and that Paul, by his adoption, in Romans of the language of
pouring, picks up on Joel’s language as well, allows us to grasp a yet deeper
sense of somebody like Paul’s ideology concerning the “last days.”
Putting the pieces together, it is not at all difficult to see that Paul
believes that the “last days” have begun in the Resurrection of Jesus, and that
these “last days” have little if any comprehension of time or its
duration. Rather, the last days are those days in which God has become
King, and this is marked by the expansion of His covenant people as just one
piece of His plan for the restoration of creation, which is a mark of the
advent of the kingdom of God.

In chapter four of Acts, Peter, having been arrested and released,
speaks to his fellow believers. As belief is so elemental to covenant,
and is quite demonstrably the key covenant marker, having been so from the
earliest part of the narrative that details God’s dealings in His world, it may
be useful to train ourselves to think of “believers” as “sons of
Abraham.” At the conclusion of his speech, Luke records “When they had
prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were
all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God
courageously” (4:31). Here again, we have “filled” as the metaphorical
vehicle, communicating God’s gracious activity. Luke could just as easily
have again spoken of the Holy Spirit begin poured out, as it would have
communicated the same message.

Not too long after this another arrest takes place.
There is a reminder that the disciples were given “strict orders not to teach”
in the name of Jesus (5:28a). Another speech is offered to those
responsible for the arrest. In that speech, Peter (presumably, though the
text says “Peter and the apostles replied” – 5:29a) says “We must obey God
rather than people. The God of our forefathers raised up Jesus, whom you
seized and killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him to His right
hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins. And we are witnesses of these events, and so is the Holy Spirit
whom God has given to those who obey Him” (5:29b-32). Here, it is the
giving of the Holy Spirit that stands in for the pouring out of the Holy
Spirit. Crucially for global Christianity, this giving is linked to
obedience, which hearkens the hearer to Abraham, his belief, and his obedience
that demonstrated itself as unswerving loyalty to the faithful, covenant God.

In the seventh chapter of Acts we encounter the story of
Stephen. He offers an impassioned speech that has, as its subject, God’s
covenant activity beginning with Moses, concluding with “You stubborn people,
with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit,
like your ancestors did! Which of the prophets did your ancestor not
persecute? They killed those who foretold long ago the coming of the
Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become!”
(7:51-52) Naturally, it is the poured out Holy Spirit that is being
resisted. To this Luke adds, “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit,
looked intently toward heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at
the right hand of God” (7:55). This cannot help but also cause us to look
to Romans five and Paul’s talk of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the hope
of God’s glory, and peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is
quite possible that Paul has this story of Stephen in mind, together with what
comes before and after it in Acts, having presented, in a very Stephen-like
manner, the story of Abraham.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Before He ascends in
the opening passage of the book of Acts, which was a way of communicating the
fusion of heaven and earth in Him and thus solidifying the conception of Him as
the Temple, which was a thought that is heavily developed in Luke, Jesus tells
His disciples that “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the
Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5). In verse eight, as He
answers a question regarding the kingdom of God, He continues His efforts to
reshape and recast the vision of His mission as Messiah, saying “you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My
witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth”
(1:8). That which they were to serve as witnesses was the Gospel,
proclaiming His Lordship and thus the advent of His kingdom. Talk of
being baptized with the Holy Spirit and of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, as
we shall see shortly, were simply ways of communicating the pouring out of the
Holy Spirit.

On to chapter two,
and beginning with verse one we read “Now when the day of Pentecost had come,
they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a violent wind
blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting.
And tongues spreading out like a fire appeared to them and came to rest on each
one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began
to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them” (2:1-2). Now, we
must not allow ourselves to get too hung up on the imagery and activities here
presented. This is the baptism. This is the coming of the
Spirit. We can grasp whatever metaphor is useful, but we must realize
that these are metaphors for something that has occurred at the hand and
direction of Israel’s God. To fit with the metaphor that Paul uses in
Romans five, as he there chooses to use that particular metaphor for purposes
that should become obvious to us, we can helpfully think of this as the pouring
out of the Holy Spirit. Since Acts essentially becomes a biography of
Paul and the church, with the mission to Gentiles the significant end of the
narrative, it is not difficult to imagine that Luke (a Gentile) purposely
highlights “pouring out” as a preferred metaphor.

This is reflected in
the inclusion of Peter’s speech, as he gives us insight into what has taken
place and how it was interpreted by the disciples themselves. To explain
what is happening, Peter reaches for the prophecy of Joel and says “’And in the
last days it will be’, God says, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all people,
and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see
visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Even on My servants, both
men and women, I will pour out My Spirit in those days, and they will
prophesy. And I will perform wonders in the sky above and miraculous
signs on the earth below, blood and fire and clouds of smoke. The sun
will be changed to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious
day of the Lord comes. And then everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved” (2:17-21).

So not only do we
here have a pouring out of the Spirit of God, but we also have a programmatic
statement about the reach of the kingdom of God, in that “everyone who calls on
the name of the Lord will be saved.” This parallels well with the Apostle
Paul’s ever-so programmatic statement when it comes to the direction of his
ministry, in that “Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame”
(Romans 10:11). “Everyone” is to be heard against the limiting of saving
and shame-avoidance, by Israel, to those that were physical descendants of
Abraham or Gentiles who submitted to and bore the covenant markers of Israel
(the works of the law). From the outset of the church it would be the
calling on the name of the Lord in conjunction with the pouring out of the Holy
Spirit (the metaphor that is used to describe what took place to cause hearing
and believing that results in an unswerving loyalty to the King), that would
delineate the covenant people, advancing and expanding the kingdom that had
clearly come.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

In verse five of the fifth chapter of Romans, Paul pushes
forward the proposition of the hope of the believer, with the life associated
with hope resounding in concert with the believing hope of Abraham, and writing
that “hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in
our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (5:5). Just as
Abraham’s hope was not disappointed, “with the result that he became the father
of many nations according to the pronouncement” (4:18b) even though such a
thing was hardly believable, so too might we believe in the Resurrection that
issues in justification for all peoples, while also hoping to personally
participate in the resurrection that is yet one component of God’s long-planned
and promised restoration of creation. The reason why all can trust, like
Abraham, in the God whose faithfulness is the foundation of all hope is
because, as Paul has said, “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

Because of the argument concerning Gentile justification
that Paul is advancing, with that argument involving unconditional inclusion
and full-scale participation under the auspices of covenant, this statement
about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit goes well beyond the field of
generalized acclimation and approbation of the Holy Spirit. This is more
than just a praise from the apostle, but is a soteriological statement that
concerns itself with the ongoing justification of Gentile justification by
means of their confession of Jesus as Lord and nothing more. With the use
of “us,” Paul is identifying with the Gentiles. In doing so, he is
drawing from a crucially important component of the story of the developing
church.

This story of development is chronicled in the book of
Acts. Though Acts will not have been written at the time of Paul’s letter
to the Romans, just as the Gospels had not been written at the time of the
letter to the Romans, we can be assured that, along with the oral Jesus
traditions (a portion of which would eventually come to be codified in the
Gospels), there were oral traditions concerning the church and the experiences
of the community of Jesus believers that had been circulating from the days of
His Resurrection and ascension until the day that Paul penned his letter.
We know that some of these oral traditions of the early believers would also be
codified in the book of Acts.

At the same time, we do find biographical information about
the believing communities in the letters of the New Testament. As it
relates to this issue of justification and to Paul’s communications that most
explicitly deal with this subject, the letter to the Galatians reveals some
specific information about the goings-on with that particular
congregation. In fact, there we can find Paul making mention of the Holy
Spirit, doing so in the midst of his considerations of Gentiles and their
justification. In the third chapter we read “Does God then give you the
Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by
your believing what you heard?” (3:5) Of course, before that it was “Did
you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?”
(3:2b) and “Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by
human effort?” (3:3b) Considering the location of talk of the Spirit’s role in
the life of the believer in the letter to Rome, in Galatians we are unsurprised
to find Paul moving from mention of the Spirit to mention of Abraham, as he
then writes “Just as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as
righteousness” (3:6). Believing what was heard is a hallmark of the
Abraham story. It is a hallmark of the believer’s story---the church’s
story---as well.

Though the story of Abraham has the Creator God speaking
directly to Abraham with no mention of God’s Spirit, the Spirit of God is
always “moving over the surface” (to borrow some terminology from verse two of
Genesis one---“hovering” if you will) of the Abraham story. Indeed, this
could be said of the entire Scriptural narrative. So though the Spirit is
not directly in sight when Abraham is presented in the Genesis narrative, Paul
appears to ascribe the communication between God and Abraham to the
Spirit. This is what we seem to be able to discern when we hear Paul ask
about giving of the Spirit in verse five, the “Just as Abraham believed” of
verse six, and the “so then… those who believe are the sons of Abraham” in
verse seven.

The Spirit is the instrument that facilitates the believing
of the hearer, generating a response like that of Abraham and bringing all
believers, be they Jew or Gentile, into the Abrahamic fold. Eventually,
this issues in Paul’s declaration that what has taken place, which is contained
and communicated in the Gospel (Jesus is Lord), has occurred “in order that in
Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we
could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith” (3:14). Paul stands
with the Gentiles, as when he mentions Gentiles he also is careful to
articulate a “we.” This reception of the Spirit by faith, an idea which
Paul has also now brought into close contact with Abraham, and therefore with
the well-known narrative of Abraham that was part of the story that every
member of Israel (and by extension every member of the covenant people of God)
told about himself and his relation to God, is akin to the mention of the
pouring out of the Spirit in Romans.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Based on the scope of
his analysis of what has been and is being wrought in and for the world through
God’s faithful action, which will continue to be made manifest by His covenant
people, we can surmise that the “grace in which we stand” is a way that Paul
uses to refer to covenant standing. This could be taken to refer to the
gracious extension of the covenant to those previously excluded, which would
fit nicely with what appears to be Paul’s identification of himself with
Gentiles, but it can also just as easily be applicable to members of Israel,
who are to be cognizant of the fact that, beginning with Abraham, they were
also specially chosen by God through no effort or causation of their own (with
this made explicit based on the words of God delivered to Israel through
Moses).

Regardless of
applicability, the recognition of God’s grace rightly leads one to “rejoice in
the hope of God’s glory” (5:2b). This rejoicing in hope points us forward
to the hope that is so profoundly expressed in the eighth chapter of Romans
(which will fall outside of the scope of this study), while mention of God’s
glory should call to mind the words of the third chapter and Paul’s insistence
that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23). We
cannot overlook the importance of the “all” there, along with the continued use
of “all,” as the statement is provided its context by the context of Gentile
justification (gaining of covenant standing) through belief in Jesus.

Jesus, having
revealed the glory of God by being the first to rightly bear the divine image,
not only reminds us of where and how we fall short of living up to what was
intended by God for humanity, He also points the way and displays the means by
which we too can be truly human and so reflect the glory of God into the
world. At the same time, as Paul draws conclusions from which he can
build as he moves on to the next period of thoughtful reflection, these words
from the beginning of chapter five draw on the fourth chapter, as Paul
continues to root his talk of righteousness, peace, faith, and grace in
Abrahamic sensibilities.

It is Abraham’s
loyalty to God that serves as the model, along with that of Jesus (which first
mimics that of Abraham) of the believer’s loyalty to God, which we are able to
demonstrate through loyalty to the words and ways of Jesus, as He has taken up
His throne of all power and all authority. More specific to Abraham and
the fourth chapter, talk of “hope” and “God’s glory” remind us that Abraham
believed with hope, against hope (4:18). Can we not say that belief in a
crucified and resurrected Lord, through which one enters into covenant with
God, is also a hopeful belief against hope? Abraham’s hope concerning the
promise that had been spoken to him, which runs parallel with our belief in the
Resurrection and the hope of resurrection in the same manner as that which was
experienced by Jesus, redounds to God’s glory, just as was the case for
Abraham, who “did not waver in unbelief about the promise of God but was
strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (4:20).

While we can
certainly imagine Abraham glorifying God, we can just as easily make the case
that it was Abraham’s lack of wavering, continuing in belief, that gave glory
to God. Regardless of what he saw, regardless of his age, regardless of
his wife’s age, and regardless of all those things that could militate against
his trusting in the promises of God concerning descendants, Abraham
believed. How can we make this application in the here and now? As
we believe in the Resurrection, so believing in Jesus (standing in covenant
with God in the process and so standing in the line of descendants of Abraham
and being positioned to share in the blessings promised to him), we believe
that He was the first of those to be raised from the dead. We believe
that this portends another Resurrection.

Regardless of that
which we see around us, as evil seems to make its way in the world without
fetters or restraints (though this is patently false), we believe that the
kingdom of God has come, that Jesus is ruling, and that we participate in that
kingdom, in its peace, and in its life. We stand by faith and “rejoice in
the hope of God’s glory,” trusting that, working through His loyal servants, He
is bringing and going to bring His kingdom to full consummation and restore His
creation as was promised and for which was hoped and expected by the prophets
of old (with Jesus and the earliest believers operating with the same hope),
such that “we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope” (5:3-4). By
this, we are allowed to imitate our Lord, so learning how to represent Him in
the world.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

By a variety of means, Caesar extended his power and his
version of peace. All good and well, one might think, but one might also question
the need to generate thoughts along such lines as we read through Romans.
Addressing that, one has to come to terms with the fact that not only does the
message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) have a spiritual component, as a
declaration that heaven and earth has overlapped in Jesus (heaven come to
earth), but it has a substantial political component as well. “Peace” was
a charged and controversial term. Assuredly, the means of achieving peace
were as debated in Paul’s day as it is in ours.

“Gospel” itself is a term associated with the Caesar and his
rule. Calling Jesus “Lord” is a subversive activity, as it usurps the
power of the Caesar, who was looked upon as Lord and Savior. “Christ” is
not a neutral term either. It is not merely a religious or spiritual
term. When somebody says that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, they
are making claims in relation to the kingdom of God that Jesus announced had
come to earth and of their loyalty to that kingdom and kingdom program above
loyalty to any other person or nation. Whether they know it or not, or
realize it or not, calling Jesus Savior does not have to do with going to
heaven upon death. Laying claim to salvation is about God becoming King
on earth, as in heaven.

As we know, “Christ” is the Greek translation of “Messiah,”
and the Jewish Messiah was well-understood to be the King of Israel. As
the Messiah was also understood to be the physical manifestation of the Creator
God of Israel, the Messiah was also thought to be King of the entire
world. That, of course, along with many other titles (son of god, to
choose one), was a title of, and a claim made by the Caesar. Applying
these titles to Jesus, calling Him Lord and Master and Savior and King while
also speaking about Him in terms of peace and salvation (that which was then
said to be brought to the world by Caesar and by Rome), could not be more of a
direct challenge to Caesar, to his rule, to his way of orchestrating and ruling
his kingdom, to his claims about himself, to the claims made about him by
others, and to the power (death) that stood behind him and any other pretender
to God’s rightful place of rule of this world that was brought into existence
at His word and hand.

What has all of this
talk of kingship and kingdom to do with much of Paul’s concern in Romans, which
is belief and justification? Quite simply, it is a question of
loyalty. Acknowledgment of a ruling power engenders questions about the
demands being placed on those subordinate to that power. Since being declared
righteous (coming under the covenant, being justified) has to do with belief,
and because belief, reaching back to Abraham and to that which is fundamental
for Paul as he observes the ramifications of the Christ-event and the full
sweep of the covenant people of God, has to do with the production of an
unswerving loyalty to God, concerns of kingship and kingdom have everything to
do with the believer’s justification. Because the kingship of Jesus
extends to each and every component of this creation, calling Jesus “Lord”
(acceding to His Gospel) has inescapable consequences for how one engages in
and with the world, bearing on every decision and every moment.

Following the
multivalent suggestions of verse one of the fifth chapter, in which Paul has
expressed the peace with God that is established and that goes hand in hand
with submission to the fact of His becoming King through Jesus (and as it
stands in contra-distinction to the peace promised by Rome and its son of god),
Paul writes “through whom we also have obtained access by faith into this grace
in which we stand” (5:2a). “We” includes both Jews and Gentiles, and the
access by faith is the means by which one enters upon the covenant (is
justified, declared righteous, saved).

Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. – Romans 5:1(NET)

Though this is an obvious understatement, Paul has said
much. Having done so, he begins to reach some immediate conclusions and
logical deductions that are forced by the things that he has presented in what
must be understood to be the building argument of the first four chapters of
the letter to the church at Rome. Those deductions begin with
“Therefore.” He writes “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:1).
Having been brought into the covenant people (declared righteous) through the
instrumentality of faith (belief in God and its concurrent unswerving loyalty
to the claims made by that God, per the example of Abraham), a state of peace
between humanity and God is engendered. This peace is attached to the
Lord, who is Jesus, who is the Christ (the Anointed One/Messiah/King).

“Peace” operates on a number of levels. One of those
levels will be overtly addressed by Paul in relatively short order. A
second level of the operation of “peace,” which is more subtle and subversive,
is surely also implied, and we can see through it the juxtaposition and choice
of particular words used at this particular place in the letter. What’s
subtle and subversive in the use of peace? Doesn’t everybody desire
peace? Answering that question and addressing that issue requires us to
ask another question and to see where that might lead us.

About what might a citizen of Rome think when they hear the
word “peace”? It would be much more than an inward state of bliss or
mellow contentment, or a cessation of against-ness, or of a lack of spiritual
conflict. The fact that Paul will go on to describe peace with God, the
need for peace with God, and the way that such peace is generated, might inform
us that these particular dimensions of peace (with which Paul deals in verses
six through eleven of this chapter) would not necessarily spring to mind when
Paul speaks of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It may very well be the case that Paul expects his Roman
audience, as they are fully ensconced within the city of Rome and therefore
live at the seat of Roman imperial ideology and its associated imperial
theology and attendant propaganda, to think of the “pax Romana,” or “Roman
peace” when he writes to them concerning peace. This was an exalted ideal
for Rome, as they imagined themselves to be the bringers of peace and justice
to the world, with this having begun under the revered and exalted Emperor
Caesar Augustus. This peace, of course, was brought about primarily
through military conquest. Following military conquest when Rome deemed
it necessary (some would simply acquiesce to the power of Rome without raising
arms against them), the Roman peace would be secured by the ongoing threat of
the exercise of military power.

Together with that, any thoughts of rebellion were quelled
and quenched by the reminder of Rome’s power of life over death, with this best
(and most horribly) embodied by the Roman cross, as it was the means of
execution reserved for recalcitrant slaves and rebels against Rome.
Crucifixion was employed to send a political message. Even the
crucifixion of a recalcitrant slave would convey Rome’s political might, as it
reminded those that would witness the event, because of its also being used as
a means of execution for those that challenged the power of Caesar, that all
were slaves of Rome.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

When we read the letters of Paul, we must allow ourselves to
do some from a viewpoint with which we are successfully and helpfully resisting
any ingrained tendencies to equate circumcision and its associated works of the
law with the completely Scripturally irrelevant paradigm of performing good
works as the means of entrance upon God’s covenant and a membership standing
among God’s kingdom people that have been called together (elected) for His
kingdom purposes.Similarly, we must
also reach the point at which we no longer think of justification (salvation)
in terms of the promise of a heavenly existence once death comes a-calling, but
in Hebraic terms of covenant, exodus, exile, restoration, re-creation, and
God’s meta-narrative of concern for His created order and the divine
image-bearers that He formed to inhabit it that encompasses the entire arc of
Scripture. It is hyper-necessary to incessantly militate against mindsets
and worldviews that would have had no place in the mind of Jesus, or for our
more immediate purposes, the mind of Paul.

These ideas form a useful and important part of our
hermeneutic, as we constantly seek to come to terms with the scope of Paul’s
own hermeneutic and vision of the kingdom of God as presented in Romans.Paul’s thought-world, when it comes to the
movement and goal of his letter to Rome, is dramatically revealed with his
statement in chapter ten of Romans that “the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who
believes in Him will not be put to shame’” (10:11), thus approaching the issue
of justification from a slightly different direction that takes in the overt New
Testament justification texts (Romans 3, Galatians 2) while also calling
attention to the Abrahamic covenant-rooted issue of participation in the
covenant people of God and the inclusion of Gentiles in the mission of God as
part of God’s plan to accomplish that which He has purposed from the time of
the establishment of His cosmic Temple (creation and the creation account).With that hermeneutical mindset understood, we
are able to proceed to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses of chapter
four and hear “But the statement it was credited to him was not written only
for Abraham’s sake, but also for our sake, to whom it will be credited, those
who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead”
(4:23-24).

This statement is jam-packed with weighty statements that
touch upon a number of ideas that are at work. We must bear in mind that
a large part of Paul’s concern in Romans (and other letters) is Gentile
justification and the covenant marker that indicates their justification that
is the counterpart of the new age of the new creation that dawned with the
Resurrection of Jesus. That which was credited to Abraham, of course, was
righteousness. Abraham came into covenant with God. Naturally, any
writing about this was not done for the benefit of Abraham. He did not
need to read about it. He lived it. The Abraham story is included
in the narrative tale of God’s people and God’s purposes, specifically
constructed to demonstrate that belief in the God of the covenant is paramount,
with specific covenant reminders tacked on at a later point in the story so as
to serve as reminders of the faithful God and the believing response to that
faithful God that produced loyal actions post-covenant (as if the entirety of
the creation, generated at the hand and command of that same God, at least
according to the story on offer in the first two chapters of Genesis, is not
enough to serve as a reminder of that faithfulness---a point that Paul raises
in the first chapter of Romans).

Paul’s use of “for our sake” gains prominence as part of his
ongoing efforts to identify himself with Gentiles and his efforts to downplay
his Jewish status. He continues to place all those that are believers in
the covenant God on the same level, insisting that the same righteousness
(justification, covenant membership, part of salvation, as we seek specificity
in our conception of salvation as an ongoing experience of living under the
covenant and participating with God in such a way that generates the overlap of
heaven and earth through our conscious, kingdom cognizant activities) that was
credited to Abraham will also be credited to those that do what Abraham did,
which is believe in God. This God, of course, is the one that raised
Jesus from the dead, thus reminding his hearers that the Resurrection can
never, and should never be too far from the thoughts of the covenant community,
as it is the basis for the widening out and advent of God’s mission to defeat
death and bring resurrection and restoration to His creation, and for the
“all-peoples” participation in the covenant. To that point specifically,
Paul writes “He was given over because of our transgressions,” our failures to
live as truly human beings in the image of our Creator (falling short of the
glory of God), “and was raised for the sake of our justification” (4:25).
Justification, as it goes out to all nations, cannot be disconnected from the
Resurrection.

In addition, the fact that in his statement about believing
in the same God in whom Abraham believed, while mentioning His raising of Jesus
(the basis for justification and an implicit reminder of the veritable
resurrection of Isaac), he makes it a point to refer to Jesus as Lord, thus
referencing Him as King (and what King lacks a kingdom?), does not go
unnoticed. In Jesus, God has become King. Heaven and earth have
come together in Him (He is the Temple and so too are those who are filled with
the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead, as evidenced by claiming Jesus
as Messiah and Lord of all against all reasonable evidence to the contrary,
i.e. the crucifixion ). The fact of His kingship and His kingdom is
determinative for how covenant members will engage in, with, and for the world
in which He is King. We cannot allow justification to be separated from
such considerations. These concerns are not additions, but are fundamental.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A moment of
reflection causes us to consider that we would not be reaching in the least to
suggest that there are multiple levels of thought upon which Paul is operating,
with multiple layers of application being suggested as he continues to work out
the implications of the Resurrection of Jesus. Certainly, if we are to
take the Resurrection seriously, recognizing it as the dynamic event that it so
obviously is as it causes us to recognize said dynamism, having sent and
continuing to send ripples into the world, we see that it meets and greets us
at every turn of our daily lives, demanding a Resurrection-shaped response (the
Resurrection reminding us of the life of Jesus) to even the most mundane
situations we find presented to us.

If a continual
assessment of the implications of the Resurrection (and the whole of the
Christ-event) is going on with what Paul is offering, as it incorporates
concerns about the God that was manifest in the Christ and His own faithfulness
as it relates to Abraham and the people of the covenant that both physically
and metaphorically spring from his loins, then it would be foolhardy and a bit
shortsighted if we did not also suggest and accept that his hearers were able
to hear him at multiple levels and from multiple positions of acculturation,
while assessing the multiple layers of implication that are on offer.
This can be taken as an indication, humbly suggested, that there can never, nor
should there ever be a final word about what Paul thinks, means, believes, is
attempting to accomplish, or desiring to see from this congregation.

Joining the family of
God in Christ together, Paul goes on to write “He is our father in the presence
of God whom he believed” (4:17b). There’s that mark of covenant
again. Taking the time to identify an attribute of that God, and doing so
as a reminder of the Resurrection, Paul adds “the God who makes the dead alive
and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do”
(4:17c). Though Paul quickly moves to make this Abraham-specific, adding
“Against hope Abraham believed in hope with the result that he became the
father of many nations according to the pronouncement, ‘so will your descendants
be,’’ along with “Without being weak in faith, he considered his own body as
dead (because he was about one hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s
womb” (4:18-19), thus providing a historical context to making the dead alive
and summoning things that do not yet exist as they do, and in the process
highlighting belief and faith, thoughts of Jesus and His Resurrection and the
covenant family that will be culled from all nations surely lurk within the
attribution that has this God summoning the things that do not yet exist as
though they already do. Indeed, a worldwide covenant family is almost
immediately suggested to Abraham upon God’s first speaking to him, and this
comes to fruition when that God makes the dead alive.

Continuing to speak of
Abraham in a way that could just as easily be contributed to Jesus and what He
perceived as His vocation and His role as the Messiah through whom God would
extend Himself and His covenant to all nations (if we want to consider the
faithfulness of Jesus as significant in this whole issue of justification),
Paul adds “He did not waver in unbelief about the promise of God but was
strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (4:20). If Jesus is also in
mind, perhaps a consideration here of the human responsibility to rightly
bearing the divine image, Paul’s understanding of the connection with doing so
to the glory of God (as demonstrated in chapter three), and Paul’s opinion
(voiced in the Colossian letter) that Jesus exactly bore the image of God, is
appropriate? Regardless, Paul goes on to say of Abraham that “He was
fully convinced that what God promised He was also able to do” (4:21).
That said, with the words that follow, he breaks away from a dual application
to Abraham and Jesus, and once again elevates belief as that which confers
right standing in relation to the covenant (justification), completely
independent and prior to circumcision, writing “So indeed it was credited to
Abraham as righteousness” (4:22). By faith, Abraham was enfolded into the
covenant, in right standing with the Creator God.

Monday, September 17, 2012

So when Paul reminds his hearers, who are familiar with the
story of Abraham, that the promise did not come to Abraham because of his adherence
to the covenant marker that would eventually be designated under the heading “works
of the law” (which came later), and that Abraham received his righteousness
(standing inside the covenant, justification, salvation, right standing with
God---all of which comes with responsibilities for this life and in this world,
having little if nothing to do with the destination of one’s eternal soul and
whether or not one ends up in heaven or hell) through faith, he is not
juxtaposing works and faith in relation to justification. Rather, his
focus remains on covenant markers and legitimating Gentile inclusion, with the
latter being an obvious part of God’s plan from the very beginning.

It seems clear that Paul recognizes, in Jesus, at least a
partial (if not complete) fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, so the
spreading of the Gospel message (Jesus is Lord) to the Gentile world, with the
subsequent submission to that message and to the Lord of the message, is a very
natural progression. Accordingly, this fits very well with, and makes
much sense of the words of the prophets of old that are very obviously
world-encompassing.

With verse fourteen, Paul points up the inherent conflict
involved in ascribing justifying activity to adherence to covenant markers
(thus contributing to the possibility of a mental blurring of lines that we
mentioned before), when he writes “For if they become heirs by the law, faith
is empty and the promise is nullified” (4:14). Again, covenant membership
(justification, salvation) does not and cannot come from the covenant markers.
The markers are reminders of belief. Importantly, God has not changed His
mind (we can relieve Him of the charge of schizophrenia when it comes to His
plans for His world and His people). The example of Abraham proves
this. He was in covenant because of belief. If this is not so, and
if he was not actually in covenant until the event of his circumcision, then
belief is indeed empty, for it produced nothing. The promises made to him
then, all of which came before his circumcision and from the very beginning
point to the global people of God that become His people through the same means
employed by Abraham (faith), are null and void.

Though Abraham obviously is not in a position to confess
Jesus as Lord, we see the story of his life as his confession, reflecting His
unswerving loyalty to the God of the promise. Those of us now in the
position to confess Jesus as Lord should similarly seek that the story of our
lives be the silent confession of the same unswerving loyalty, generating the
opportunity to offer verbal, public declaration.

Belief is
transcendent. It transcends the works of the law. It does not stand
over and against the works of the law that were but reminders of a previous
covenant shaped by previous faithfulness and a faithful response, but rather
serves as the foundation. To make this point, Paul adds that “it is by
faith so that it may be by grace” (4:16a). Grace, of course, was present
in God’s dealings with Abraham, and did not receive its advent with that of
Jesus. Thus it has “the result that the promise may be certain to all the
descendants---not only to those who are under the law” (4:16b), the Jews, “but
also to those who have the faith of Abraham” (4:16c), who are all those that
enter into covenant (including those who have the law) by means of their belief
in the God of the covenant.

In conjunction with
these moves, Paul makes a point to here reiterate that Abraham, “is the father
of us all” (4:16d). In a culture that places a heavy emphasis on the
father as the head of a household and the honor of that position, whether that
culture be Jew or Gentile, with much additional honor (for the Jew) attached to
being a member of Abraham’s household, this is not an insignificant
statement. The household could extend beyond blood relations, which we
see in the story of Abraham, as he is willing to look to a servant in his house
as a completely legitimate heir to the covenantal promise, and would have
considered God’s carrying on and carrying out of His promise through that
servant as a demonstration of His covenantal faithfulness. This would not
necessarily be an unusual position for Abraham to take, as it was a common and
accepted practice for a favored servant to enjoy benefits in line with being a
biological or adopted son. Therefore, this particular use of the Abraham
example is doubly emphatic when applied to the status of Gentiles in relation
to the covenant (not to mention the whole of the believing community), in that
there is an egalitarianism insistence, in that all that come to belief in Jesus
are of the same family and bear the same status, while it also joins Jew and
Gentile together in a mythic physical descent, as Paul adds “(as it is written,
‘I have made you the father of many nations’)” (4:17a).

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Any approach to the fourth chapter of Romans begs to be
dictated by the communal conception and remembrance of Abraham.As it is, it is crucial to consider that the
doing of good works, which is so often confused with the keeping of the law as
a means of attaining salvation, is nowhere in sight. It is not only not
in sight in the sense of being the antithesis of the message of justification
by faith, it is also nowhere in sight in terms of it being a recognizable
category for Paul. We cannot foist the dichotomy of faith versus works on
to what Paul sees as the crucial issues of justification, which are the
inclusion of Gentiles, the basis of their inclusion, the transformation of the
recognized covenant markers because of the cross and the Resurrection, and the
fulfillment and extension of God’s covenant through what took place in and with
Jesus as the Messiah.

With that said, we look to the thirteenth verse and Paul’s
insistence that “the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would
inherit the world was not fulfilled through the law, but through the
righteousness that comes by faith” (4:13). When we hear this, and as we
attempt to let the letter speak to us as a first century church gathered around
the meal table to hear a letter from the Apostle, mental habits that have been
constructed over extended periods of time must be resisted, with this best
achieved by constant reminders concerning the terminology with which Paul
operates. We must resist the tendency to allow ourselves to mentally
regress to thinking of “law” as “the doing of good works,” rather than properly
thinking of “law” as shorthand for the covenant markers of Judaism
(circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and dietary laws---with circumcision often also
functioning as shorthand for the three) that identified someone as being a
covenant member, with the ongoing recognition of the value of these things
lying in the fact that they are reminders of belief in the faithfulness of God
in general and His faithfulness to His covenants with Israel in
particular.

Though it seems to require significant mental exertion, and
though it certainly requires us to hold together different ideas, right
understanding dictates a realization that the performance of these covenant
markers did not cause one to be in covenant (saved, if you will), just as it
was not the confession of Jesus as Lord that caused one to be in
covenant. The performance of the covenant markers (be it the Jewish
covenant markers that served to isolate the people of God and wall off the
covenant, or the confession of Jesus’ Lordship in the world and over one’s
life), as was the case with Abraham and his circumcision, is the reminder of the
belief in a faithful God.

It may be the case that this understanding had become
blurred, in that there was a conception, perhaps held by some Gentiles (though
it may be the case for Jews as well), that it was the performance of the
covenant markers themselves, rather than the belief that stood behind that
performance, that actually produced and induced an individual’s
justification. This runs back to what was said in verse twelve, which was
“he is also the father of the circumcised… who also walk in the footsteps of
the faith that our father Abraham possessed when he was still
uncircumcised.” Belief, whether under the old covenant markers or the new
covenant marker, was and is the means of entry into the covenant.

The point that Paul is making, which is that from which he
builds while also being that to which he is heads, is that the presence of the
Creator God in the Christ, with all that has attended that grand event, has
generated a massive change, and that the new reminder of belief that creates
covenant (justifies, saves), the declaration of which also appears to possess the
power to generate belief on the part of those that hear the declaration, is the
confession of the Lordship of Jesus, with this being inseparable from the
realization that the kingdom of God has come upon earth (as announced by
Jesus), that this kingdom was truly inaugurated at the Resurrection
(introducing the renewal of creation into the world), and that it will be fully
consummated at some point in the future (a course of events that was completely
unexpected).

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Having sufficiently (hopefully) immersed ourselves in the
story of Abraham, such that we have now heard and comprehended the crucial
components of that story of covenant within its proper order, we can use that
for purposes of an interaction with the fourth chapter of Romans. We can
begin that interaction with the ninth verse, in possession of perhaps a new
potential for enlightenment, now hearing this portion of Paul’s argument for
Gentile justification (covenant standing) as the adjunct to all that has
preceded it and as a preface to that which is the weighty subject matter of
chapters nine through eleven. Reading then, we hear Paul asking his mixed
congregation of hearers “Is this blessedness then for the circumcision or also
for the uncircumcision?” (4:9a). This “blessedness” is of a piece with
the Abrahamic covenant (begun in chapter twelve of Genesis, with annexations
over time and the course of the text). We do ourselves a tremendous
disservice if we do not maintain our cognizance of this fact, along with the Abraham
story, as we hear the answer to Paul’s rhetorical question, which is “For we
say, ‘faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.’” (4:9b) Yes, ‘twas
Abraham’s faith---his belief that engendered an unswerving loyalty to the
covenant-making-and-keeping Creator God---that brought him into right standing
(covenant) with God.

Keying in on the order of events, as Paul elevates the
covenant marker of belief in Jesus over and against the Jewish covenant markers
of the day, Paul, as if poking and prodding at his listeners for an answer that
should be all too obvious to them, while also conveying just a little bit of
shame on those that have insisted on the necessity of circumcision to be
identified as a covenant person and so enjoy its benefits, asks “How then was
it credited to him? Was he circumcised at the time, or not?”
(4:10a) Forcing his point, the answer comes forth as “No, he was not
circumcised but uncircumcised!” (4:10b) This, when read to the
congregation by a tradent, would undoubtedly be read in such a way as to convey
the singular importance of this point when it comes to dealing with this quite
pressing and, for Paul, possibly church-and-kingdom-of-God limiting
issue.

The next verse points up what Paul sees as something that presents
an insurmountable contradiction for those that insist on circumcision (along
with Sabbath-keeping and food laws, neither of which are anywhere near the
Abraham story) as the means of entrance upon the covenant. He writes “And
he received the sign of circumcision,” which we remember was to serve as a
“reminder” of the fact of his right standing with God and the promises that had
been made to him, “as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he
was still uncircumcised” (4:11a). Now, even the most ardent defender of
circumcision as a covenant marker would not be willing to insist that Abraham
was not in covenant with God before being circumcised. Circumcision, Paul
reiterates, was the sign of what God had already determined in regards to
Abraham because of his belief. Thus, confirming his position in regards
to Gentiles and what is required of them to become covenant people (to be
justified), this order of events was neatly orchestrated by God “so that he
would become the father of all those who believe but have never been
circumcised” (4:11b). Why? “That they too could have righteousness
credited to them” (4:11c). That is, that they too could, because of their
faith, showing itself forth as an unswerving loyalty to the covenant and Creator
God of Israel as manifested in Jesus the Messiah, attain the justification that
was attained by Abraham, in advance and independent of circumcision.
Belief was and is the key, and the prophetic insistence on God’s performance of
a circumcision of the heart rings in our increasingly alert and sensitive
ears.

While proposing all of these things, Paul is still sensitive
to the position of those that are the physical descendants of Abraham through
Isaac, who have lived as the covenant people according to the dictates of the
covenant as governed by the Mosaic law (and morphed over time into the shape
that had been taken in the days of Jesus), Paul, and the early church, and who
bear this particular covenant marker because of the ongoing faith of a covenant
people. This sensitivity is well demonstrated in chapter nine, the
precursor of which is to be partially found in this statement: “And he is also
the father of the circumcised, who are not only circumcised, but who also walk
in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham possessed when he was
still uncircumcised” (4:12). There are no second-class citizens.
Bearing the mark of circumcision does not mean that one does not walk the path
of faith. Paul does not allow his hearers to lose sight of that fact that
Abraham was faithful both before and after circumcision. Circumcision did
not diminish faith. In fact, as we can see in the Abraham story, it was
the faith by which Abraham was justified that eventually led to him being
gifted with a reminder of that covenant---a unique, identifying mark.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

With that, we reach the point of the Abraham narrative in
which circumcision, as a covenant marker, is introduced. As we listen to
the words of God to come, we can think back through the Abraham story, and realize
just how long it has been (both in terms of the text of Scripture and the
passage of time) since God has first called Abraham to Himself and for Himself,
to be His light to the nations (chapter 12). In verse nine of the
seventeenth chapter of Genesis we read “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you,
you must keep the covenantal requirement I am imposing on you and your
descendants after you throughout their generations. This is My
requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: Every male among
you must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your
foreskins.’” (17:9-11a)

Well this pretty much clinches the argument for those that
insist that circumcision must be undergone for entrance upon the covenant (for
justification), so Gentile believers need to line-up to undergo the procedure
as did Abraham. Putting aside that Paul does speak of the circumcision of
the heart (with a reminder that he is not the one that comes up with that idea –
that would be the Hebrew prophets), we need to take into account the fact that
this is the point at which circumcision is finally introduced to Abraham.
Are we to presume that Abraham, up until this point (actually, shortly
thereafter, when the circumcision is performed) Abraham has, in fact, not been
in covenant with God (not righteous, not justified, not in right standing, not
“saved”)? Of course not. Such a proposition would be
ludicrous. We could not suggest such a thing for even a moment.

However, with what follows, this idea gains traction.
We read “Throughout your generations every male among you who is eight days old
must be circumcised, whether born in your house or bought with money from any
foreigner who is not one of your descendants. They must indeed be
circumcised, whether born in your house or bought with money… Any uncircumcised
male who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin will be cut off
from his people---he has failed to carry out My requirement”
(17:12-13a,14). Clearly, this is difficult to square with Paul’s
position. The language has not changed. We are still hearing about
descendants. This includes the “nations” of which we have heard so
much. It seems rather straightforward, and if we are listening to Paul
with the story of Abraham in mind, as this story is crucial for the
comprehension of the extension of God’s covenant and its associated justifying,
then those that insist on circumcision as crucial for entrance upon the
covenant must win the day.

Is that what is being presented? Well, in a word,
no. We are not looking at circumcision as that which allows Abraham, or
anyone else for that matter, to be counted among those justified (those looked
upon as being righteous). For Abraham, the circumcision is the mark of
God’s covenant.It did not bring Abraham
into covenant. Naturally, at that time, there is no Jesus. There
has been no crucifixion. More importantly, there has been no
Resurrection. That’s significant, because the Resurrection changed
everything. For Paul, it marked the beginning of the new creation.
For Paul, it is the Resurrection that allows for the circumcision of the
heart. It is the Resurrection (as the culmination and summation of the
Christ-event) that marks the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise to
Abraham concerning the multitude of nations (that have filled the earth) that
are his descendants.

Conversely then, not only does the Resurrection begin the
process of truly encompassing all nations under the covenant tent (thinking of
Isaiah and the lengthening of stakes), but it is the Resurrection and its
associated proclamation of Jesus as Lord that begins to create a people and a
kingdom that subsumes distinct peoples and nations, creating a new nation of
covenant people whose features, in imitation of Christ as the quintessential
human being, supersedes all other heretofore recognized distinctions.
This is yet another reason that, for Paul, circumcision and its related
covenant markers fall by the wayside. Besides, if we, from our point of
view on Paul, looking at the situation from a position thousands of years
removed, entertain the necessity of circumcision because of what is to be found
in Genesis seventeen, then we must jettison Paul and deny the influence of
God’s Spirit upon him as he took the message of the Gospel into the Gentile
world. We are probably not going to be willing to do such a thing, though
there were many in his day that were happy to do precisely that.

At the same time, the astute reader would have noticed that,
in the recounting of the selected passage from Genesis seventeen that has to do
with circumcision and its requirement, some statements were omitted. Those
statements were “This will be a reminder of the covenant between Me and you”
(17:11b) and “The sign of My covenant will be visible in your flesh as a
permanent reminder” (17:13b). The mark of the covenant was to be a
reminder of the covenant standing. It did not provide the standing.
What provided the covenant standing (righteousness, justification, salvation)
was belief. True for Abraham, true for all. Circumcision did not
convey righteousness (justification, covenant inclusion) upon Abraham.
Similarly, simply uttering the words “Jesus is Lord” (if there has been no
circumcision of the heart, and putting aside any plucking of out of context
proof-texts from a letter to Corinth), if there is no belief in the God that is
at work in Jesus, does not convey righteousness (covenant standing,
justification, salvation). However, considering that, historically,
saying “Jesus is Lord” did and does not exactly earn one any special favors or
privileges, with this being ever so true in Paul’s day, Paul would find it hard
to believe that anyone would say “Jesus is Lord” without it being a core
belief. For this reason then, the words, as they belie a believing
response of faith and loyalty, serve as the covenant marker, standing in for
circumcision and all that eventually accompanied that particular
rite.